Andrew Sullivan: Public Servant

Though a conservative (of the old-school, Burkean, sane variety), Andrew Sullivan, has been a shining light of sanity in an otherwise moribund conservative commentariat over the past several years. Despite his initial support, he realized early on that the Iraq War was a colossal mistake and has since virtually begged for forgiveness of his support. He also grokked early on that the Bush Admin was corrupt to its core and that his ideological compatriots were more or less partisan hacks, and has since been cast out of the conservative club. Whereas know there's a flood of thinking conservatives who are pouring forth from the partisan dens of what's left of the Republican party, Sullivan was an "early adopter" (unadopter?). He got it way back in the day and he got the fuck out. 

Though in partisan terms, he bats for the other team (he did actually call libs fifth-columnists in the scary days after 9-11, which is difficult to overlook), in human/rational/intellectual- honesty terms, he's one us. 

What's more, he was early, vigorous supporter of Obama, making the case for his presidency earlier and better than almost anyone I can think of other than the candidate himself. And since McCain's desperate, late-August, foisting of Palin upon the nation, Sullivan's just been flat-out a public servant, from the get-go cataloging her vacuous, disingenuous, and dangerous nature at length. 

This weekend he is reprising his "The Odd Lies of Sarah Palin" series of posts . The posts catalog the myriad untruths Palin has uttered again and again since being selected as McCain's running mate (at least 17 so far). These are falsehoods that has been proven to be so with scads of documentation and/or videotaped evidence. 

Here's the first of the bunch: 

The Odd Lies Of Sarah Palin I: Firing Monegan
This weekend, I'll be re-posting all the factual untruths that Sarah Palin insists are still actually truths.I've updated each item to keep up with the new information that has come out since the original posting.

I'm doing this because Sarah Palin's contribution is to introduce a new level of detachment from reality to our politics. After Bush-Cheney, this would be hard for anyone. But youbetcha she can.

This has been the pattern from the start of her career: a denial of reality combined with an almost unhinged and unlimited ambition. Since the press is barred from questioning her thoroughly, since we will never know how she responds to the long list of untruths she has told - from the smallest biographical detail to the biggest policy - all I can do is remind my readers of the record one more time before November. There are nineteen assertions of factual untruths that I've been able to document.

We'll start at the beginning, and Troopergate.

…

Read them all if you can stomach it.